Monday, October 1, 2012

Yan Kaichen - Week 1

I choose Microsoft for my brand.

I noted from the references I had gathered that the design of Microsoft products, especially in their mouse and keyboards were beginning to move from an ergonomic design to a more simplistic, compact and flat design.

I began by trying to find a unifying theme in their products, which led me to explore the iconic four window pane shape of the Windows logo. But the results were not very interesting.

Next I applied some of the design themes onto a variety of potential products, one sided headphones, watches, helmets and glove like devices.

I disliked the results, and decided to explore some ergonomic forms, and apply the strong iconic colour themes of the Microsoft X-box.

Remembering this is an Entertainment Design course, I decided to draw cyborgish things. Because cyborgs are cool.

This led me of a communication module that was connected to the users nervous system, allowing him or her to communicate not just through sight and sound, but through all five senses. I decided on applying elements of the ergonomic design of earlier Microsoft products with the segmented compactness of their more recent hardware.

1 comment:

Overall your sketch quality is good and your product research pages are organized. You are close, but I don't really see is any analysis of the design of the existing product. The result in your sketches are designs that look less like microsoft products and more like standard video game tech. I like the cyborgish stuff your are designing, but design it as if MICROSOFT hired you to design their next human-computer interface. Look at the shape breakdown of the mouses as well as the types of accelerating lines they are using. Page 8 of your sketches gets the closest, while the other sketches lose the quality of line that the microsoft designers used in their mouses. The cyborgish stuff looks too much like video game art, and not enough like microsoft. Part of the issue is that your are drawing random part lines. Try and design each shape, to fit the body, as well as thinking about the spacial break downs between big, medium and small. There are also value break downs between the shapes. Dark, medium and light. This will help as well.

You are close. Do a page of studies of the mouses and other organic looking products.